Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

We are all living the dream life

A few days ago I was using one of the machines in my athletic club's circuit weight room, when I heard a guy at a nearby machine say, "Brian?" I said, yes, and the guy said “I’m Bob. Bob Jones.” [Not his real name, as I want to respect his privacy.] I hadn’t seen Bob for about 36 years or so. We used to play tennis together back when I was into the sport that I'd played since high school. Bob asked if I was still playing tennis. I said, no, not for many years. How about you? He said,…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

After prostate surgery, I try to get some philosophical implications from the experience

Last Monday I got the TURP surgery done on my prostate by a doctor from Eugene's Oregon Urology Institute. I learned on October 31 of last year that the procedure could benefit me, though this isn't completely assured. If you're crazy enough to want to know the details, they're in a HinesSight blog post. I figure that I might as well try to glean some philosophical implications about life from my surgical experience. So here goes... In the three months between when I got the go-ahead for the surgery, and the actual surgery, I thought about all the things that…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Plotinus

Stuck at Lake Partway — I revisit my Plotinus analogy through atheist eyes

Today I came across a passage in Robert Saltzman's book, Depending on no-thing, that reminded me of how I ended my book about the teachings of Plotinus, a 3rd century mystic Greek philosopher, Return to the One. Saltzman wrote in reply to a question from someone: You seem to imagine that suggestion as "negative." I don't see it that way, although it is related to the so-called via negativa, the traditional process of neti neti [not this, not that]. If someone actually wants to awake -- many more say they do than actually mean it -- that begins, in my…
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Posted inComments Personal/Stories

Thanks for another good churchless blog year, whether or not you are an unbeliever like me

With less than three hours to go before 2025 draws to a close here in Oregon, the main thing I want to say in this final blog post of the year is... I deeply appreciate each and every person who visited the Church of the Churchless this year. It was a difficult period for me a few months ago, after I learned that Typepad, my blogging service for 22 years, was shutting down for good on September 30. I'd thought that this could happen at some point. Still, it was a shock. Fortunately, with the expert assistance of Glory Webs,…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Merry Christmas from now not-so-rainy Oregon

I have no problem saying "Merry Christmas" even though the Christ part of Christmas means absolutely nothing to me. It's just a way of expressing a hope that whoever hears those words will have a pleasant holiday season if they're in a part of the world that celebrates Christmas. Every December I write a Christmas Letter, even though my wife and I title it Holiday Greetings. Here's a link to this year's letter. Last night, Christmas Eve, Laurel and I hosted a small dinner for three friends who live in our neighborhood. It was a partial potluck. We provided muffins,…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Sometimes it’s necessary to do everything wrong in order to get something right

Right. Wrong. We all use those words a lot. But often we don't really understand what they mean. Most of us, me certainly included, typically view right and wrong as moral dichotomies. As in, Trump's immigration policy is right; Trump's immigration policy is wrong. But actually that sort of black and white attitude is itself wrong, because life usually is composed of shades of gray. Here's an example. I've been playing Klondike, a solitaire game, for many years on my iPhone. In 2011 I wrote about the philosophical side of the game: "Klondike solitaire -- a fine philosophy of life."…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Personal/Stories

To suddenly realize life is precious because death is inevitable — an atheist blessing

I've had this feeling before. It happened to me today. I'm sure I'll have it again. It comes with the territory of being alive. At least for me. My usual late afternoon dog walk with our Husky mix, Mooka, started off with no surprises. We take the same route every day. It takes us about half an hour, plus or minus, depending on much sniffing Mooka does along the way. We start from our rural south Salem (Oregon) house, walk along some trails on our property and easements on neighboring properties, then up to the road that leads back to…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

For me, the genuine spiritual path leads from religious fantasy to everyday reality

Recently I heard from someone who currently is a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years. This person described both what bothers them about their experience as a RSSB initiate, and also what they enjoy about their experience. Their message ended with what perhaps is the most important thing they said, at least to my eyes. Sant Mat is the philosophy underlying the RSSB teachings. Thanks for having the courage to set up the site and make your views known. I hope to be…
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Posted inComments Personal/Stories Politics

Open respectful discussion of controversial issues is what the world needs now

Today, the first day that I've started posting on this WordPress version of Church of the Churchless after 21 years of blogging on the Typepad platform that is shutting down on September 30, a well-known 31 year old advocate of Republican and conservative policies, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated while speaking at a college in Utah. His death has thrown the United States into turmoil. We've had too many recent instances of politicians and political leaders on both the left and right killed in the name of some sort of twisted ideology. Or sometimes, for no discernible reason at all. Somehow,…
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Posted inMiscellaneous Personal/Stories

Typepad is leaving me, but I’m not leaving you

Last Wednesday, August 27, Typepad -- my blogging platform -- announced that it was shutting down as of September 30. When I saw the email from Typepad I was shocked, though by no means totally surprised. For quite a while, rumors have been circulating of Typepad's demise. Last March I asked Typepad support if the rumors were accurate, as described in "Typepad told me they aren't going out of business. Hope that's true." Well, it wasn't true. Worse, Typepad only gave its remaining users (new customers haven't been accepted for several years) a bit more than a month to migrate…
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Posted inHappiness Personal/Stories

It’s good to be as unguarded as possible in our relationships

When we see a guard in front of a property, we figure there is something valuable inside that needs to be protected. But when it comes to being guarded in our relationships with other people, this is an interesting question to ponder: what are we guarding when we aren't open and honest with them about how we really feel? I'm not saying that total openness and honesty is always a good thing. When the clerk at a checkout line in a grocery store asks me, "How's your day going?," I realize that they aren't expecting a detailed answer about how…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

My Oregon softball obsession shows the pluses and minuses of attachment

For 35 years I belonged to an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that was an offshoot of the broader Sant Mat movement. As I wrote about in 2013, RSSB had a decided renunciative focus, as contrasted with a life-affirming focus. For about 35 years I was a member of an India-based organization headed up by a guru whose teachings were definitely in the renunciative camp. The goal was to leave this physical world behind and find a better one in higher realms of reality. To do that, it was necessary to beware of the Five Deadly Foes, lust,…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

There’s value in experiencing new things, even if you’re not sure you’ll like them

We simply don't know what the future will bring. That's a basic fact of life. I was reminded of that today when I rummaged through a drawer where I keep blank notebooks and notepads, making room for a new supply I'd gotten from Amazon. Down at the bottom of a bunch of rarely used stuff was an envelope. On it I'd written "Will (open -- obviously -- only if I die)" It was a one-page document dated March 2, 1991 called Last will and testament.  I'd written it in a period between my marriage to Laurel in 1990 and whenever…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Deep thoughts about my obsession with a frustrating Starlink internet problem

For a bit more than 24 hours I've been obsessed. Not with the state of suffering humanity. Not with how I can become a better person. Not with any high level moral obsession that I'd be proud of. No, my obsession was with why our normally reliable Starlink satellite internet had stopped working. This is our only genuine broadband option out here in the wilds of rural south Salem, Oregon, where we live a whole six miles from the city limits of a state capital but have "broadband" options that people in Outer Mongolia would scoff at. (6-7 Mbps DSL…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Why the amazing stories we tell about our life aren’t really all that special

We humans are natural story-tellers. Being a highly social species, we love to tell other people tales about how our life came to be what it is, and usually those stories find a receptive audience.  Everybody likes a good story. But I've been thinking about a fatal flaw that strikes at the heart of many stories: though they often, if not usually, feature some special event that was, if not exceedingly unlikely, at least out of the ordinary, a more detached perspective calls such specialness into question. This gets at our tendency to put ourselves at the center of our…
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Posted inBuddhism Personal/Stories

Theory of mental modules made me feel better about my many failings

I love it when after reading something in a nonfiction book, it doesn't just make sense to me intellectually, but deeply touches me emotionally.  That's how I felt after reading a chapter in Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is True book, "How Thoughts Think Themselves." Before describing the wonderful feeling I had, I'll share some of the intellectual side of Wright's message -- which is based on a blend of Buddhist teachings, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience.  He says this about the theory of mental modules in relation to mind wandering: Though the trains of thought that carry you away from direct…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Pieces of churchless string too short to save

Many years ago, in that far-off time when local newspapers were much more vibrant and successful than they are now, our town's paper, the Salem Statesman Journal, had a column written by someone who occasionally started his piece with "pieces of string too short to save." Meaning, he was going to mention a bunch of unrelated things in his column that day, each of which was interesting, but didn't merit taking up the entire column. Today I figured I'd dust that saying off and do my blog post imitation of it, otherwise known as three-dot writing. ...Yesterday I heard from…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Personal/Stories

Here’s our 2024 Holiday Greetings letter

I'm not a Christian, but I have no problem with saying "Merry Christmas." After all, tomorrow is as much a secular day devoted to giving and receiving presents as it is a celebration of Jesus' supposed birthday. The problem with this celebration is that it's virtually certain Jesus wasn't born on December 25. Wikipedia says: In the third century, the precise date of Jesus's birth was a subject of great interest, with early Christian writers suggesting various dates in March, April and May. Steven Hijmans of the University of Alberta writes that "cosmic symbolism" inspired the Church leadership in Rome…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Learning new skills is key to improving both mind and body

Like most people, I'm a big believer in improving my skills. This is such an obvious thing to do, it hardly bears mentioning. But I feel like I need to stress the obvious, because some visitors to this blog seem to view spirituality as a "one and done" sort of thing.  Meaning, you find a religion, meditation technique, mystical path, or whatever that suits you, and you stick with that approach with no modifications for the rest of your life. Yeah, I realize this sounds ridiculous, and it is. Yet I've encountered people who actually seem to believe it's the…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m learning some things by caring for my wife

As I said in my previous post, "My wife's shoulder surgery is a growth opportunity for me," since Laurel had shoulder replacement surgery last Tuesday, I've been her caregiver -- and will be for the 4-6 weeks she'll have to wear a sling on her right arm (we're hoping for four weeks). Until you can't use an arm for much, it's difficult to know all the things you won't be able to do anymore. We're rediscovering those things, since Laurel had rotator cuff surgery on the same arm about ten years ago that also required her to use a sling…
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